Dim Sum and Then Some

Today was my first China Town dim sum experience. I'm not sure how I've managed to live so close to China Town and be the occasional visitor all these years, and missed the dim sum. Today Mel and I braved frigid wind chills and headed to Three Happiness. Apparently this place is packed on the weekends, but at 10am on a Thursday morning, we quite literally had the place to ourselves. Instead of carts loaded down with options to choose from, we were handed a laminated card and an order form and told to make our choices.

From an epicurean perspective, Mel has never steered me wrong. She was the perfect person to guide me thru my first dim sum. We ate and chatted and ate some more. Everything was just incredible. Complex flavors danced in my mouth after every bite. Seven dishes and a couple of pots of tea later we'd had our fill and moved on to shopping.

Shopping in China Town is quite an experience, and it made me wish I knew just a little of the language. I picked up an assortment of candy to share with the family.

We also stopped by a couple of grocery stores. One of them had chicken feet on ice. Another had dried sea coconut. I was more intrigued by the sea coconut than the chicken feet. I bought a bit of the coconut, having no clue how I should use it.

I spent a chunk of my evening researching dried sea coconut. I've found that there's a gaping hole of knowledge of dried Chinese ingredients in the English-speaking world. It sort of reminds me of when Julia Child lived in France and was looking for a French cookbook in English. Eventually I found a great soup recipe that calls for dried sea coconut, but I'm missing about half of the other dried ingredients to go with it. As it turns out, I recall seeing most of those other dried items in bins right next to the dried sea coconut at the grocery store. Imagine that. It looks like I'll be heading back to China Town very soon to get those other dried ingredients for the soup. Stay tuned, I'll let you know how it turns out.